by Eirik Gumeny
“I think I liked the old new you better, Charlie,” said Catrina.
“Joselin fixed the leader-y part of his brain and he’s not used to having that stick back up his ass yet,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “Plus he’s been mostly dead all day and I think it made him cranky.”
“I think one of these new body parts has a nicotine addiction,” added the president. “I haven’t wanted a cigarette this bad in years.”
“Well, too bad. I hate it when you smoke.”
Chester A. Arthur XVII grumbled, Queen Victoria XXX glared, and then Dr. Arahami continued.
“We’ll need twenty pounds of isotonium to rebuild the bus distributors at the substations,” said the scientist. “Most of them spiked and depleted when the transformers overloaded. The closest mines I could find were in the southwestern quadrant of the Irish Colombia territory. Unless my intelligence is incorrect you won’t be able to go more than ten feet without tripping over a lode.”
“I don’t like how you qualified that,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“You said ‘lode,’” added Thor with a giggle.
“The last and most important item we’re going to need is a trivection cooling unit. Without it, the perpetual motion engine running the generators will overheat and we’ll be worse off than when we started,” said Dr. Arahami. “The only unit I was able to track down is owned by a despotic madman with an industrial machinery fetish.”
“Tyrone Tainthammer, the Earl of New London?” suggested Thor.
“Yeah, that’s the guy,” replied the doctor. “How did –”
“Tainthammer?” queried Queen Victoria XXX.
“He used to be a porn star,” explained Thor.
“You guys are making shit up now, right?” asked Catrina. “You went over the real plan before we got here?”
“I really hope not. I’ve always wanted to meet Tyrone Tainthammer.”
“Sorry, Thor, but that’s not happening,” explained Dr. Arahami, “you have to come with me. I’m going to need you there to help me move the heavier pieces around and jump start the perpetual motion engine.”
“Where is ‘there’ exactly?” inquired Catrina.
“The main electrical grid for the North American continent is Montana,” answered Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“In Montana, you mean.”
“No. Montana. The entire state.”
After an, quite frankly, inevitable uprising of sentient kangaroos in Australia accidentally led to a global chemical war that ended the world for the twenty-second time, Canada, Mexico, and the United States merged into one gigantic hyper-country, if only so that the next time a world war broke out they would each have two fewer opponents with which to contend, in much the same way a man might convert to Mormonism and marry his mistresses so that they and his wife will stop running into one another and causing scenes in his favorite restaurant.
In an effort to make their jobs easier, the government of the Amalgamated Provinces and States of Canada, America, and Mexico condensed their many disparate electrical infrastructures into one, paving Montana in its entirety and filling it in with electrical equipment, in much the same way a man might convince his multiple wives to all share the same bed with him so that he doesn’t have to remember whose room he was supposed to go to on which night or worry about which key goes into which keyhole.
This actually worked spectacularly well, right up until the Amalgamated Provinces and States of Canada, America, and Mexico exploded due to incompetence, in much the same way a man with multiple wives is incredibly happy right up until they simultaneously divorce him when it becomes apparent that he’s a dickhead.
Post-solar storm, however, and with no government to maintain it, the state-spanning electrical grid was no longer doing anything except sitting there, rusting and slowly leaking coolant from a variety of cracks, in much the same way a septuply-divorced man beaten by a bouncer with a pool cue sprawls face downward in a dark alley, gurgling in a pool of his own fluids.
“Which one has the lowest chance of death?” asked Ali.
“Do you mean short-term or long-term?”
“That is a terrible answer.”
“I call dibs on the screwdriver!” yelped Boudica IX.
“Once everyone has everything,” said Dr. Arahami, “meet me and Thor in the primary control room of Montana. It’s the biggest of the five buildings on the grid and has a giant neon sign on its roof that you can see for miles. You can’t miss it. If everything goes as planned we’ll have gone across the grid and replaced everything by the time you get there.”
“If there’s nothing else,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, “I’d suggest we get going now, before we waste any more time. People are freezing to death out there.”
“I have to pee,” said Boudica IX.
“Me too,” said Thor.
“I kinda do too,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“OK, fine, bathroom breaks for everyone,” said the cloned president. “Then we get going.”
“No, you’re taking a shower first,” corrected the reconstituted royal. “I’m not sitting with you smelling like a hospital laundry room for another minute.”
“And I need to get Lee to replace whatever it is that makes my arm work,” said Ali, limply flapping his inert forearm. “I kept forgetting to ask.”
“The hemo-electric turbine?” replied the doctor. “Sure.”
“And there’s the leg now, too.” Ali waved the red-tinged stump of his heavily gauzed calf in the air, the scorpion claw duct-taped to it wiggling unsteadily.
“How come he gets to wear animal parts?” asked Boudica IX.
“OK, bathroom breaks and we fix Ali, but after that –” began Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“I’m starving,” said Catrina.
“I’m also that,” said Thor.
“OK, yeah, that’s a good point,” said the president. “I don’t think I’ve eaten in two days.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Broadcast
“This is a KARK 4 special weather report. I’m Luanne Van Dörkenson filling in for meteorologist Rainn Bilthump, who was devoured by a t-rex several days ago while we were fleeing the KARK station after the dinosaurs that escaped from Cretaceous Park[xvi] descended on downtown Little Rock.
“From what I can tell by staring out my increasingly ice-covered windows, trapped as I am by a fast-moving snow bank that has impeded further progress and made opening the doors of the KARK SUV impossible, it would seem that Rainn was incorrect in his prediction of an ‘eventual’ ice age. That ice age is on us now and, if this reporter and her cameraman are any indication, we are all probably going to freeze to death on an abandoned highway, and soon.
“The only comfort we can take from this situation, judging from the theropods dropping like flies all around us anyway, is that the reign of the dinosaurs did not last for long. Presumably, a diet heavy in North Americans led to a mass outbreak of fast-acting diabetes among the terrible lizards. Or, you know, the freezing to death.
“With the murderous reptiles succumbing and hopefully going extinct again, I can only assume that the remaining human and mostly-human residents of the continent – the lights still off and everything outside our windows a dirty winter wonderland – are getting down with some good, old-fashioned fucking and starting to reclaim our place atop the food chain. I know I have, and will continue to, if only because body heat is the only thing keeping this SUV from freezing over entirely. It also doesn’t hurt that watching dinosaurs collapse and die apparently gets me sexually excited and my cameraman really enjoys when I talk in my news voice, which I have been doing a lot, seeing as how it helps me detach myself from the utter hopelessness of my current situation and keeps me from screaming incoherently in impotent rage.
“This has been Luanne Van Dörkenson with a special report for KARK 4, Little Rock’s only news source in this SUV. I’ll be back at ten with a full report on my cameraman’s sexu
al prowess.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Well, There’s Your Problem
After joyously slaying their way across the gated communities of converted, ethanol-fueled missile silos previously known as Kansas; into and out of the cavernous, diesel-powered sasquatch reservation situated in the abandoned government bunker under Cheyenne Mountain; and through the expensive, organic, midget-driven energy mills of New Hollywood, the elite private city and entertainment mecca situated in the sprawling tunnels and hollows beneath what used to be Denver International Airport, “Typhoid” Mary Mallon and Lizbeth “Lizzie” Borden began to observe a change in their victims’ attitudes towards their unceasing rampage.
“Lizbeth, my darling,” said “Typhoid” Mary Mallon, “I cannot help but notice there have been fewer and fewer of those deliriously angry sorts stridently defending their enterprises from our fevered wrath.”
“It would certainly appear to be true,” replied Lizbeth “Lizzie” Borden, possessing a recently deceased rhinoceros and extricating herself from the collapsed tin shed previously known as Krazy Kurt’s Khemicals and Karwash. “This Krazy Kurt fellow does not seem to mind at all that we have waylaid his alchemical initiative.”
“I wonder if the man is even at home.”
Mary, in the guise of a jaguar, slunk her rotting black frame through the piled snow and toward the neighboring ranch house. She put her frontmost paws up on the windowsill and peered inward.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh my.”
“Is something the matter?” asked Lizbeth, her rhinoceros shell suddenly foaming and melting around her, the victim of an unforeseen reaction between two chemicals from opposite sides of the tracks. She slipped her ethereal form from the rapidly decaying body and floated to Mary’s side.
“I would not say that,” answered Mary.
“No, I dare say everything is quite fine,” echoed the ghost with a slight giggle, hovering beside the jaguar and staring intently inside the home. “Quite fine indeed.”
Mary and Lizbeth continued to spy on Krazy Kurt and his wife in their firelit living room for several more minutes.
“She does seem to be enjoying herself.”
“Well, you know what they say about the crazy ones,” replied Lizbeth.
“Is he going to –”
“Oh my, look at that.”
“They have remarkable balance.”
“Is that a neighbor?”
“I do believe that is a neighbor.”
“Oh my.”
“She certainly is a pretty young thing,” purred Mary. The jaguar began to shift awkwardly, pressing itself against the side of the house again and again.
“Mary,” said Lizbeth, laughing with shock, “are you –”
“Oh, do not be so puritanical,” replied Mary with mock indignance. “You cannot honestly say to me that in all your time walking this earth you have not missed those carnal desires stripped from us when we died. Or that this scene has not produced an aching in your loins.”
“You might do well to note that I do not currently have any loins,” explained the ghost of the elderly Lizbeth, gesturing toward the aery dress covering her phantasmal nethers.
“Perhaps then you should go and find yourself a set ...” The jaguar smirked. “ ... and we can remedy this situation together.”
Lizbeth “Lizzie” Borden clapped her see-through hands together and floated off through the volcanic winter to find a fuckable corpse.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Game Is Afoot, Watson
“So the RV runs fully on trash, right?” asked Mark Hughes, his ocular implant whirring gently[xvii], his arms crossed over his chest, and his telekinetic squirrel friend on his shoulder. The pair stood on the snowy lot of Easy E’s RVs and ATVs in what was once central New Jersey, on the outskirts of civilized society. Before them was a sixty-year-old Winnebago, retrofitted with a deconstitution matrix, some serious off-road tires and shocks, a large plow, and a plethora of other amenities to help survive a world that had grown significantly more hostile and haphazard since the vehicle’s original manufacture.
“As long as we have something to throw in there to deconstitute we’ll be fine?” continued Mark. “I don’t want to find out in the middle of the mutant nation that this thing actually needs gasoline.”
“No gasoline, no electric, no nuclear. You have my word,” replied Easy E, blinking his eyes a few times to get the sleep out of them. This was a man who believed in his products so thoroughly that he had been sleeping in one of the campers right up until the moment Mark and Timmy arrived. “You can shove your arm in there and run it off everything south of yer elbow if y’ get desperate.”
“Are we going to get desperate?” asked Timmy the super-squirrel. “What’s the mileage?”
“Hundred to the gallon organic, seventy-five synthetic.”
Mark and Timmy looked at one another, thought some things between the two of them, and nodded.
“All right, we’ll take it,” said Mark.
As Mark handed over the agreed-upon price of a box of homemade gyros and a case of Advil Cold & Sinus medication, a gigantic animal came tearing through the dark lot on four legs and ran crashing into the nearest recreational vehicle. The RV wobbled slightly and the beast roared at the top of what was assumed to be its lungs. It was difficult to tell for sure. The animal looked like a very large feline of some sort, a lion maybe, with paws and short fur and all that, but something about it was off. The creature immediately threw its monstrous frame ferociously into the vehicle again.
“What the fuck is that thing?” asked Timmy, his tiny eyebrows raised.
“Manticore[xviii], I think,” said Easy E, narrowing his puffy red eyes.
Sometime after the sasquatch insurrection that followed the thirteenth end of the world, opinions toward all cryptids and creatures of legend soured significantly, and the fabled Jersey Devil[xix] felt compelled to emerge from his place of hiding in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey and hold a press conference. A need for vengeance had overwhelmed society, and roving hunting parties – complete with balloons and cake – were often seen wandering about the streets and forests and airplane junkyards, looking for something mythical they could shoot in the face so they could feel better about themselves.
The Jersey Devil, not particularly a fan of being shot in the face, and growing tired of eviscerating hunter after hunter after hunter, came out and laid down some basic zoology and anatomy lessons, distinguishing himself from the ranks of the sasquatches and driving home the fact, once and for all, that not all creatures of fable and legend were the same. The beast spoke eloquently, and at great length, but the gist was basically, “You don’t fuck with us, we won’t fuck with you.”
An uneasy truce settled between humanity and the cryptid world shortly thereafter, due in equal part to the impassioned speech of the Jersey Devil and the fact that if one shoots at a pack of chupacabra[xx] and misses, those fuckers will swarm like a dropped beehive and start tearing off faces.
The manticore knocked the recreational vehicle onto its side, sending up a spray of ashy slush, then turned and bounded toward the trio. Timmy grabbed the leaping felid with his brain and held it in midair. The two men and the squirrel stared at the monster in awe. The creature had a body resembling that of a lion, but instead of the traditional whiskered leonine face there was a malformed human head, with row upon row of teeth, and instead of a tail there was the stinger of a scorpion growing from its hindquarters.
The mythical beast struggled and thrashed in the super-squirrel’s psychokinetic grasp, mumbling under its undoubtedly foul-smelling breath.
“You ain’t supposed to be here!” shouted Easy E. “We had an agreement! I ain’t kicked at a leprechaun in years!”
“Things change,” growled the monster.
“Change? What are you talking about?” asked Mark.
They never found out, as a harpoon burst through the terrifying face of the manticore, endin
g the conversation abruptly. Timmy shrugged and unceremoniously dropped the beast to the ground.
“Ho-ly shit,” said a disheveled man in thermal overalls and a large flannel hat on the far side of the lot, breathing heavily and carrying an empty harpoon gun. “Di’n’t think I’d catch up t’ him. Gall damned thing trashed my distillery earlier. Been trackin’ him all af’ernoon.”
“The manticore trashed your distillery?” reiterated Mark, furrowing his brow. “Purposefully?”
“Sure did,” said the man. “Thing came out of nowheres, wrecked up all my stills and tanks, and then took off.” The dirty man snapped his fingers. “Jus’ like that. Weirdes’ thing is, the gall damned thing never even took a swipe at me. Hell, ne’er even a second look!”
“I don’t even know you and I kinda wanna hit you,” agreed Easy E.
“I know!” said the man, spreading his hands in surprise. “I get that all the time. Like you would not believe.”
“Something doesn’t make sense about all this,” thought Timmy aloud.
“Yer tellin’ me. All my butanol up and gone, like that!” He snapped his fingers again. “And now there’s talking squirrels!”
“I’m not talking, chief.”
“Wait, did you say butanol?” asked the former hotel owner. “The heating fuel? You’ve been doing well since the blackout started, I take it.”
“Like a fatass pig at a pig whorehouse,” said the man. “And then when it got cold to boot? Hoo-boy.”
“And then it came after the deconstitution campers ...” continued Mark, deep in the bowels of his own mind. “Did the manticore attack anything else on the way?”
“Shoved over a few pumps in an ol’ abandoned gas station off the Parkway, but that was it. Sucker ran clear through a vegetarian training camp without so much as disemboweling no one.”
Mark Hughes furrowed his brow so hard that his grandkids were going to be born looking like they were deep in thought.
